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Long-term summer temperature reconstruction inferred from tree-ring records from the Eastern Carpathians

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Abstract

The first 1,000 year long Carpathian tree-ring width chronology was established based on living and subfossil stone pine (Pinus cembra L.) samples from an upper timberline forest located in Calimani Mts. (Romania). Tree-ring data were standardized using the regional curve standardization method in order to preserve the low and medium frequency climate signals. The de-trended index strongly correlates with summer mean temperature both at annual and decadal scales. The Calimani summer mean temperature anomalies were reconstructed for the period ad 1163-2005 applying the rescaling method. This new climate proxy from the Carpathians shows similar fluctuations to other North Hemispheric temperature reconstructions, but with periods of distinct differences. The fingerprint of Little Ice Age in the Calimani area is visible between ad 1370 and 1630 followed by lagged cold decades in ad 1820 and 1840. The recent warming is evident only after the 1980s in our reconstruction.

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Acknowledgments

Ionel Popa was supported by the IDEII program, project ID65. Zoltan Kern was partially funded by the Hungarian Science Foundation (OTKA) T 43666 and K67583. The RO-37/2005 bilateral cooperation financed the travel costs. Special thanks to Jonathan G.A. Lageard and Eva Bugya for the English revision of the manuscript. Also thanks for David Frank and Ulf Büntgen for providing their temperature reconstructions. We thank Olivier Bouriaud and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.

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  1. Research Station for Norway Spruce Silviculture, Forest Research and Management Institute, Calea Bucovinei 73 bis, 725100, Câmpulung Moldovenesc, Romania

    Ionel Popa

  2. Institute for Geochemical Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budaorsi ut 45, 1112, Budapest, Hungary

    Zoltán Kern

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  1. Ionel Popa
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Correspondence to Ionel Popa.

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Popa, I., Kern, Z. Long-term summer temperature reconstruction inferred from tree-ring records from the Eastern Carpathians. Clim Dyn 32, 1107–1117 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-008-0439-x

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